Dongles and Forks

I'm going to say right up front that I'm not so deep into the tech world that I completely understand this story. However, I get the gist of it and have formed an opinion. Anyone who wants to correct any misperceptions on my part is welcome to comment.

There's a decent summary on Amanda Blum's blog: A female techie attends a conference, is offended by a couple of guys sitting behind her in a lecture making lame dongle jokes, takes a picture of the guys and tweets it resulting in one of the guys losing his job. Then the backlash hits the female techie's company and she gets fired as well.

Now, most guys have no idea how pervasive harassment is in tech circles. They simply don't notice it. But it's there, it's annoying and most techie women fight it when they can and ignore it when they can't. It drives regular women away from techies and technology. It limits how far women can advance in tech circles. It stops girls from pursuing interests in tech. It's a serious problem, really.

This particular techie woman fights it all the time. And this particular time she fought it entirely the wrong way. She basically used a flamethrower to get rid of a gnat and burned down her world. A calm word to the men or taking the picture to the convention organizers would have dealt with the problem. Instead, she posted the picture online and publicly shamed the men.

That said, the online reaction proved there's a long way to go for women in tech. The names the female techie have been called aren't something any decent man would ever use to refer to a woman. The attacks on her company were uncalled for and made her overreaction look like a baby's temper tantrum. Even now you can go to virtually any tech board and find comments on this story that are so sexist you'd think women are less than chattel in our society.

Don't get me wrong. I think the woman is an idiot and deserves to be attacked. It's the nature of the attacks that I find so disturbing.

You see this in other male-dominated arenas. Women cannot win. If they fight it, they are attacked for being too bold. If they don't fight it, they are weak and worthless. Reasonable complaints are routinely ignored, so many women go overboard. And the hits keep coming, women are still constantly harassed and men claim that women just can't take a joke.

I don't know the solution. Fight the stupidity when you see it, but keep calm about it and don't overreact. Don't pull out the flamethrower first thing. Start with the flyswatter, gals. Geek and nerd guys are usually cool and usually can learn. Let them know when they cross the line and most of them will try to improve their behavior. Because when you use that flamethrower, everyone gets burned.